James Cameron begins Mariana Trench deep-sea dive

Film director James Cameron has begun an attempt to become the first person in 50 years to visit the deepest part of the ocean. Cameron is travelling 11km (7 miles) down to the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, where he hopes to spend six hours exploring and filming. He is making the dive in a specially designed and cramped one-man submarine, the Deepsea Challenger. The journey has been delayed several times by bad weather. A manned descent to the trench was last attempted in 1960, by US Navy Lt Don Walsh and Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard. They spent about 20 minutes on the ocean floor but their landing kicked up silt, meaning their view was obscured. Before the dive, the Titanic director told the BBC, that making the descent was "the fulfilment of a dream". He said: "I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction at a time when people where living a science fiction reality. "People were going to the Moon, and Cousteau was exploring the ocean. And that's what I grew up with, what I valued from my childhood."